The radio frequency (RF) spectrum is the foundation for many wireless communications systems in use today, including radar and cellular communications systems. Specified frequency ranges, sometimes identified as bands or channels, in the RF spectrum may be allocated for use by different entities, for different purposes, or in different geographic locations. As used in this disclosure, “spectrum” generally refers to any frequencies, frequency bands, and frequency channels in the RF spectrum that may be used or allocated for wireless communications.
Many service providers that provide wireless communications systems, including radar and cellular communications systems, use wireless networks to deliver various content and services to customers. A wireless network often employs predetermined spectrum, protocols, and infrastructure to support wireless communications between different network nodes and end users (e.g., customers or subscribers) in the network. As used herein, a network node may be any entity that communicates over the wireless network. Some wireless networks commonly used today include Wi-Fi, broadcast, 3G, and 4G networks. The manner in which different content and services are delivered to customers, and how the wireless networks are used to meet Quality of Service (QoS) criteria associated with such content and services, is often dictated by rules and policies that are hard-coded in one or more network nodes. By way of example, the service provider may implement a policy that prioritizes certain transmissions in the wireless network, e.g., based on the sender, receiver, or content of the transmission, and may further provide one or more rules for implementing the policy, such as, in this example, ensuring the QoS for higher-priority transmissions exceeds a minimum value.
The rules and policies in the wireless network, e.g., hard-coded in firmware, hardware, and/or software in one or more network nodes, are typically set by the service providers to enable enforcement of policies associated with the service providers. In some cellular networks, for example, such rules and policies may be stored in, and enforced by, a policy engine, such as a Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF), in conjunction with subscriber information that is captured by a Home Subscriber Server (HSS) in the network. Such existing systems using a PCRF and HSS, however, generally fail to deliver content and services that meet a comprehensive set of criteria established by the service providers.
In addition, because the rules and policies associated with each service provider are typically hard-coded in network nodes in the wireless network, the spectrum used for data transmissions that implement the rules and policies is often pre-assigned by the hard-coded rules or policies and cannot be changed dynamically. There is a need to improve how the service providers can deliver content (e.g., video, audio, web, email, text, and any other types of data) and services using spectrum that may be dynamically allocated without compromising criteria that needs to be met to satisfy their rules and policies.